The 10th anniversary of the founding of the national democratic movement – Rukh – caused a lot of soul-searching among its founders, present leaders and well wishers. How is it that the movement that led Ukraine 10 years ago has never been in power and is now split with two presidential candidates – Yuri Kostenko and Hennady Udovenko?
'The rocket Rukh shot independent Ukraine into the world orbit,' said Ivan Drach, a writer and one of the founding fathers of Rukh, at the 10th anniversary of Rukh – organized by the Yury Kostenko wing of the political party at Kyiv Polytechnic on Sept. 10. Is this true?
The first Rukh congress took place in the second week of September 1989 in the background of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet empire.
Two events in September 1989 shook the political foundations of Soviet Ukraine – the Rukh congress and the dismissal of Ukraine's hard-line communist boss Volodymyr Sherbytsky. Behind these events were party reformers led by the ideological secretary Leonid Kravchuk.
During 1989, Communist Party reformers and nationalists, along with protesters on many other issues, formed a national movement for the reconstruction of Ukraine or later just Rukh (Movement). In the second week of September, the first Rukh congress brought together 1,109 delegates representing 280,000 members. But without the blessing of the communist reformers, the conference would not have taken place.
The Communist Party reformers provided the tight security around the Kyiv Polytechnic hall where the first Rukh conference took place. The special paramilitary police units – OMON – that surrounded the hall served two purposes. The first to make sure that the congress took place – as a section of the Communist elite was against it – and the second to intimate the delegates in case they got out of line.
Inside the conference hall, reform Communists were in charge of the conference proceedings. But among the delegates was a few-hundred-strong faction from Lviv packed with veterans of street demonstrations for independence. Led by former Soviet political prisoners, these anti-communists didn't let the reformers have it their way. In the end, on the conference's political resolutions, neither side got its way. Rukh fell into the hands of the independents, but this victory was pyrrhic as all the reformers within two years also came out for independence.
The congress's master of ceremonies was Dmytro Pavlychko, an executive of the party's writers' union and a leading party reformer and initiator of Rukh. Pavlychko had the unenviable job of attempting to steer the conference's resolutions to support Gorbachev's perestroika. The main debate coalesced around renewing the USSR with a human face versus the creating an independent Ukraine. A delegation of Luhansk miners left the conference when they failed to place workers' rights in the center of the debate.
The appearance at the podium of former political prisoner Vyacheslav Chornovil backed by fanatic rank-and-file activists from western Ukraine ensured that the Communist elite could not use Rukh as their popular vehicle as they had intended. The personal intervention of Leonid Kravchuk, who attended the three day-long debates, only temporarily stopped the tide toward independence. He warned the delegates of the threats against Rukh by anti-reformers. During the conference Kravchuk privately warned Pavlychko not to allow radical anti-party resolutions or Rukh would be banned.
A resolution blaming the party for the Chernobyl disaster was not even put to a vote, as its promoter Yuri Scherbak – later to become the Ukraine's ambassador to Israel and the United States – wasn't even allowed to the microphone.
The first Rukh congress ended in a compromise. It neither called for Ukraine's independence nor for the leading role of the Communist Party – but for the social renewal of society. There was no independence rocket launched from this conference.
What role did Rukh play in 1991 during the parliament's proclamation of independent Ukraine on Aug. 24 and the independence referendum and election of the first president on Dec. 1? The answer is that Rukh played an important but a supporting role; reform Communists played the leading role. The reformers formed the majority in the Soviet Ukraine's parliament and who voted for independence and for the banning of the Communist Party. Rukh and its supporters had only a quarter of the votes in parliament. The former communists engineered the December referendum that gave more than 90 percent of the vote for independence. Again Rukh only cheered the process along.
In 1991 Rukh reached its political peak. In the presidential elections, its leader Chornovil came in second with 22 percent of the vote – a result that the Communist Party candidate, Petro Symonenko, dreams to achieve in the coming presidential elections. In this year's presidential elections, the two Rukh candidates will be lucky to get a total of 5 percent of the votes.
The 10th-anniversary event organized by the Kostenko's Rukh was more of a wake than a celebration.
Kravchuk said that it was thanks to him that the first Rukh conference had taken place at all. As ideological head of the Communist Party of Ukraine, he said, he alone stood for Rukh's right to have a congress. As for what had gone wrong with Rukh, Kravchuk said that its first major mistake was to reject his offer, after he became president, to form his government. Rukh's second mistake, Kravchuk said, was to join with the left in parliament in 1994 to shorten his term by voting for immediate presidential elections. Rukh's mistake today, he said, is its opposition to the Kuchma government and hence 'opening the door to the left' to take power.
The last head of Ukraine's Communist youth organization and former head of the pro-Kuchma People's Democratic Party, Anatoly Matviyenko, challenged Kravchuk, saying that today – as in 1994 – Kravchuk linked his fate with the oligarchs 'the Surkis' and Baikais'.' Matviyenko, who now heads Open Politics, appealed for launching a new democratic movement on the right.
The presence of Udovenko at Kostenko's organized anniversary event provoked the thought that two Rukhs might unite. 'We are organizing a united democratic movement. If Udovenko wants to join, he is welcome,' Kostenko told the Post.
A racist explanation was given at the conference why Rukh failed. 'It was due to Rukh's decision 10 years ago to pass an anti-Semitic resolution and to make all residents, regardless of nationality, citizens of Ukraine,' said Hryhory Musiyenko, a regional Rukh leader. To a startled audience but with some approval in the form of clapping, Musiyenko announced. 'There is only one political party in Ukraine – it is called Zionist.'
Pavlychko, the former reformer and now ambassador to Poland, who, to his credit, stepped forward and didn't mince his words: 'What was said by [Musiyenko] is shameful and a provocation.'
On the 10th anniversary, the best way to remember the first Rukh congress would be to form a new political party – not of the right – but one that meets the needs of the majority. Such a movement is not likely to be formed before presidential elections. The oligarchs with their incumbent president will most likely determine the outcome of the presidential elections. All the other parties, especially the two Rukhs, will play their customary supporting roles.
Jaroslav Koshiw is Post's Opinion Editor.
